Microsoft Office 2013

New version delivers touch-screen, cloud, mobility, and dozens of functional enhancements.

An essential tool for many CPAs is a dependable computer running
Microsoft Office. Accordingly, CPAs have more than a passing interest
when Microsoft releases new editions every three years or so. This
year should be no exception.

With Office 2013, Microsoft has made major modifications related to
new touchscreen capabilities, cloud connectivity, and a new
subscription pricing plan. In addition, Office 2013 delivers a
multitude of application enhancements, many of which are listed in
Exhibit 1. This article explores new Office 2013 features that affect
CPAs and provides guidance on whether you should upgrade (see sidebar
“Upgrade Advice for CPAs”).

New Features in Excel 20136. Quick Analysis7. Flash Fill8. PowerView9.
New PivotTable Tools10. Improved Functionality When Opening New
Excel Windows11. Recommended PivotTables and Charts12. New
Chart Controls13. Get a Link14. Publish Excel Data to
Social Media

New Features in Word 201315. Open and Edit PDF Files in Word16. Threaded Review
Comments17. Read Mode With Page Turning18. Alignment
Guides19. Placeholder

Office 2013’s ribbons look and work almost exactly like Office
2007/2010’s ribbons, resulting in only a minor learning curve. Office
2013 provides new controls for launching and using the applications on
touch-screen devices, but the 2010-style ribbon, combined with a
standard keyboard and mouse, remains the primary means for operating Office.

On mobile devices, Office 2013 sports the same familiar ribbons, but
they have been redesigned to fit smaller tablet and smartphone
screens. Most of Office’s new touch controls work similarly to mouse
clicks, but gesture recognition has been added. For example, you can
navigate Excel workbooks or Word documents by swiping your finger
across the screen. You can also pinch and spread your fingers to
shrink or enlarge spreadsheets, documents, or presentations. A new
Touch Mode button inserts more space around the
ribbon’s icons for easier finger operations on smaller touch-screen devices.

Office’s new square, color-coded tiles are used to launch
applications on Windows 8 tablets, smartphones, and computers equipped
with touch-screen monitors. The tiles can be resized and rearranged,
and the color-coded schemes make it slightly easier to identify and
select the correct application (see Exhibit 2).

Office 2013 provides new cloud connectivity, including a free
SkyDrive account (with as much as 25 gigabytes of free, initial
storage) for securely saving your files to the cloud for access from
any computer or device you use. Depending on your purchase option, you
can also run Office apps from the cloud, again from any computer or
device you use. If you’re not yet ready for the cloud, don’t fret. You
can still run Office 2013 applications from your computer and store
all data files locally. Beyond these global product enhancements, many
new features have been added to the applications, as described below.

NEW FEATURES IN EXCEL 2013

Of all the Office 2013 applications, Excel benefits from the most
impressive enhancements. Excel’s new Flash Fill
watches you work and applies logic to help you complete tasks. Let’s
assume that you have a list of 44 first and last names in column A, as
shown in Exhibit 3, and you want to separate them into columns B and
C. As you start typing the first name of the second record in column
B, Excel’s Flash Fill guesses what you are trying to
do and offers to fill in the remaining 42 first names (as shown in
gray text).

Excel’s new PowerView inserts new worksheets
connected to your data, then enables you to create new report types,
such as the interactive map shown in Exhibit 4. The resulting
PowerView Map report is zoomable, and filters can be applied to
display portions of the data.

PowerView worksheets can be published as stand-alone, interactive
reports to reporting service destinations such as Microsoft’s
SharePoint PowerPivot Gallery. Some of the tools provided by PowerView
are the ability to create a dashboard containing multiple PowerViews,
apply themes and backgrounds, insert pictures and text boxes, insert
collapsible and expandable tiles, and add data slicers. CPAs who work
with PivotTables likely will appreciate Excel’s new Timeline
Slicer, which helps users slice and dice Pivot data that
contain dates. For example, selecting the dates May through October on
the Timeline Slicer adjusts the PivotTable to display May through
October data. (Editor’s note:PowerView and PowerPivot are
available only via a multilicense Office Professional Plus or
stand-alone Excel 2013 agreement or an Office 365 business
subscription plan. For more on Office 2013 pricing plans, see the
sidebar “Office 2013: Rent or Buy?”)

As an advanced enhancement, Excel provides a Create
Relationships tool (previously available when working in
PowerPivot) for building table relationships in workbooks that contain
two or more tables sharing at least one common field name.

Once relationships have been established, the More
Tables option allows you to add data fields from multiple
tables to PivotTables.

Another PivotTable enhancement involves drillability. Previously,
users could only drill down on PivotTable data to view underlying
details, but now you can also Drill Up to view
summary information and Cross Drill to view connected
data contained in related tables.

Excel offers new tools that analyze data and recommend PivotTable
and Chart layouts to best illustrate that data. Place the cursor
anywhere in the data area and select Recommended
PivotTables (or Recommended Charts) to
return recommended PivotTable or Chart options.

Some changes simplify basic Excel tasks, making it quicker and
easier to work with the application. For example, in edit mode, Excel
no longer displays an apostrophe in front of the cell contents, which
allows you to edit the beginning content of a cell without having to
right-arrow past the apostrophe. This may be a small change, but in
practice you’ll likely find that it simplifies the editing process
more than expected.

Users with multiple monitors may appreciate that Excel now opens
each workbook in a separate instance of Excel, making it easier to
position separate workbooks on separate monitors. Further,
copy-pasting formulas between workbooks opened in separate instances
now yields intact formulas, instead of formula values.

Clicking on a chart in Excel pops up new chart controls allowing you
to quickly apply predesigned formats, apply data filters, and help
tweak, redesign, and annotate a chart (see Exhibit 5).

More than four dozen new functions have been added to Excel, several
of which are described in the sidebar “New Excel Functions of Note.”

Other noteworthy enhancements include browser settings for exporting
worksheet data to the web; a button for inserting combination charts;
an inquire add-in for reviewing design, function, and data
dependencies; and abilities to embed worksheet data in a webpage;
publish workbooks online through Microsoft Lync; view animations in
charts; connect PivotTables to new data types (such as OData, Windows
Azure MarketPlace DataMarket, and SharePoint data); create MDX queries
against multiple sets of data; decouple PivotCharts so they stand
alone; and compare two spreadsheets to display changes (similar to
Word’s Compare tool).

New Excel Functions of Note

Microsoft added 50 new functions to Excel (increasing the number of
functions to 450), and the following 12 new functions in particular
will appeal to many CPAs.

2. CEILING.MATH: This function can be used to round
up a number to a specific interval, such as the nearest 99 cents, as
shown in the image below.

3. DAYS: Calculates the number of days between two
dates and times (this function is slightly easier than subtracting
dates and rounding the difference).

4. FLOOR.MATH: Rounds numbers down to a specific
interval and also can be used to round negative numbers toward zero,
instead of toward a smaller number. For example, –8.5 can be rounded
to –8.0 (instead of the –9.0 result delivered by the older Round function).

5. FORMULATEXT: Displays referenced formulas as
text and can be used to improve formula reading, reviewing, and printing.

6. ISFORMULA: Returns the value TRUE if the
referenced cell contains a formula.

7. ISOWEEKNUM: Calculates the week during the year
in which a given date falls. As an example, I used this formula to
determine that I was born in the 53rd week of 1959.

8. PDURATION: Returns the number of periods
required by an investment to reach a specified value. For example, you
could calculate that $1,000 invested at 6% APR would take 26.89 years
to reach a value of $5,000. (This function approach is faster than
constructing a 322-row table to calculate the result.)

9. RRI: This function returns an equivalent
interest rate for the growth of an investment. For example, you could
calculate that a $1,200 mutual fund investment that grew to $5,600 in
18 years earned an average return of 8.93%.

10. SHEET: Calculates the sheet number of the
referenced sheet. For example, you might use this function to
determine that the worksheet containing interest rate assumptions is
entered on the 46th sheet in your workbook.

11. SHEETS: Calculates the number of sheets in a
referenced range.

12. SKEW.P: Like the Skew function, SKEW.P
calculates the standard deviation of a string of data, but it bases
its calculation on the entire population instead of a sample of the
population. This function could be used to determine whether each line
item of a company’s historical financial statement data is consistent
enough to use as a basis for projecting the following year’s budget.

Word has a number of PDF improvements that might interest the CPA
community. When an unprotected PDF file is opened in Word, it
instantly is converted to a Word format, ready for editing. Once
you’ve completed your edits, you can save it as a Word document or
back to a PDF format. Note: Microsoft cautions that PDF documents
opened in this manner may contain minor formatting issues—for example,
pages may not break exactly as they do in the original PDF file if the
PDF document contains images, tables, or objects.

An improvement that reviewers should find useful is Word’s improved
Track Changes format and threaded review
conversations, which make it easier to follow the back-and-forth
review comments.

Word’s improved Read Mode provides icons for
turning pages with a tap of a finger on touch-screen devices, with a
click of the mouse, or by rolling the mouse’s scroll wheel. Read Mode
allows you to split a document into side-by-side pages or narrow
columns to give documents the look and feel of a book—a format that
better accommodates speed reading. Double-tapping or double-clicking
any inserted object (tables, charts, pictures, and videos) expands
them to full-screen size, and you can also stream videos within documents.

Other Word enhancements include vertical and horizontal alignment
guides that pop up automatically when you move an image, object, or
text box to help you snap them into place correctly on the first try.
Cropping or resizing images using the mouse is improved to adjust
images in one-pixel increments, rather than three. When you reopen a
Word document, Word displays a placeholder tab containing a hyperlink
for returning to the last position you were at when you closed the
document, so you can quickly pick up where you left off.

NEW FEATURES IN OUTLOOK 2013

In
a significant enhancement, Microsoft has rolled out
Outlook.com, which provides cloud-hosted centralized
email accessible from all of your computers and mobile devices.
Outlook’s new touchscreen tile design and menus work well on
smartphones (see screenshot at left).

Outlook’s look and feel has been improved in several ways. The
screens and menus are cleaner, and a new Navigation
Bar has been added at the bottom, providing quick access to
Calendar, People, and Tasks. Outlook now provides a Quick
Peek into the calendar, contact list, and tasks when you
hover over these options.

Outlook’s new People Card can combine disparate
sources of contact information (Outlook, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)
into a single contact record and can also display social media status
updates, pictures, and activity feeds from all your friends and
followers. This enhancement enables you to view current social media
content for senders or recipients as you read or compose email,
perhaps helping you to remember the sender or include a congratulatory
comment on the recipient’s new grandchild. This approach might help
you keep up with your friends, colleagues, and connections solely from
within Outlook. New features also allow you to flag, delete, mark, or
reply to email messages directly from within the reading pane without
opening the email, and you can share a mailbox folder with others,
such as a project team.

New ActiveSync functionality connects Outlook to
Outlook.com or Gmail automatically, without the need to download,
install, and configure a complicated connector. This tool also syncs
your Outlook.com or Gmail calendars, contacts, and other information
associated with those accounts. Calendar Sharing
offers new tools and a variety of new methods for sharing calendar
details directly from within the calendar.

NEW FEATURES IN POWERPOINT 2013

PowerPoint’s Presenter View has a new look that
privately displays teleprompter-style presenter notes, upcoming
slides, a presentation timer (with a time restart button), zoom tools,
markup tools, touchscreen controls, a stylus, and a touch-screen
stylus. Additionally, the Presenter View no longer
requires a second monitor for use; simply press Alt+F5 to run
presenter view on a single monitor, as pictured in Exhibit 6.

When you are making a presentation, the new Slide
Zoom allows you to double-click on an object or area in a
presentation to temporarily enlarge it (pressing the Esc key returns
the presentation to a normal view). The new Navigation
Grid privately displays thumbnail images of all slides on the
presenter’s screen. New touchscreen gestures such as swipe, tap,
scroll, zoom, and pan can be used to present slideshows from your
tablet, smartphone, or other touch-screen device. A welcome
enhancement is the new Review Pane (see Exhibit 7),
which features threaded comments and replies similar to those found in
Word 2013.

PowerPoint enables you to present live online meetings free via
Microsoft Lync, and this platform can now deliver live video and audio
with slideshow presentations. Lync allows you to host an unlimited
number of audience participants (in some versions), send invitations
via email, mute audience members, block audience video, and hide names
from other audience attendees. Another noteworthy improvement is
Lync’s ability to seamlessly play slideshow-embedded video clips from
within the presentation.

PowerPoint features more than a dozen new templates and themes, most
of which are designed for the newer 16:9 (HD aspect ratio) widescreen
monitors and flat screen TVs and projectors. There are 22 new
transitions, including Paper Curl, Ferris Wheel, Orbit, Fly Through,
Vortex, and Doors, to name a few.

On the slide master, alignment guides can be placed to ensure that
slide elements are positioned consistently across all slides. A new
option enables you to merge shapes to form a single shape, and text
can wrap tightly to that new shape for a professional effect. Because
PowerPoint is frequently used with a projector, Microsoft added
improved capabilities that will not only detect the presence of a
projector, but will also automatically adjust the video output size
and resolution settings for optimum visibility. Creating motion paths
for text boxes and objects is easier now with new ghost
images that visually show the user where the animated objects
will end in relation to their starting point (shown in the screenshot below).

PowerPoint also added a color Eyedropper that makes
it easy to match colors (shown in the screenshot below).

Upgrade Advice for CPAs

CPAs have much to consider as they weigh a possible jump to Office
2013 (see the sidebar “Office 2013: Rent or Buy?”).

Technology leaders will likely embrace the new Office, while
laggards will likely hold off as long as they can. Most CPAs fall in
the middle, and in my view, upgrading to Office 2013 makes more sense
for the following groups of CPAs:

1. CPAs on Windows 8, because Office 2013 is
designed to work in the Windows 8 environment.

2. CPAs operating in the cloud, because Office 2013
provides new features and functions for accessing data in the cloud,
running applications from the cloud, and sharing data through the
cloud. There are caveats to this, however, which are covered in the
sidebar “Office 2013: Rent or Buy?”

3. CPAs with touch-screen monitors, because Office
2013 is touch-screen enabled. (Please note that Office 2013’s
touch-screen tiles will respond to mouse clicks, even in the absence
of a touch-screen monitor.)

4. CPAs who want to use Office on their mobile tablets or
smartphones, because Office’s new tile-based buttons,
touch-screen controls, and phone-friendly menus help Office operate
better on mobile devices.

5. CPAs on Office 2003 or earlier, because those
editions of Office are well behind the times and Office 2013’s
enhancements are sufficient to warrant an upgrade.

6. CPAs on Office 2010 or 2007 who find the new features
essential, because Office 2013 includes many significant
enhancements, just one of which could justify upgrading.

The following groups of CPAs may find staying on Office 2010 a
reasonable strategy:

1. CPAs using Windows Vista or XP have no choice
but to stay put because Office 2013 does not run on those platforms.

2. CPAs remaining on Windows 7, because Windows 7
does not support touch-screen, therefore Office 2013’s new tiles and
touch-screen capabilities will be less meaningful.

3. CPAs who are satisfied with their current
computer systems and are not yet ready to fully embrace the cloud,
touch-screen monitors, tablets, or smartphones should probably hold
off upgrading. If your systems and software are fairly current and
working well, you need compelling reasons to justify the upgrade
costs, installation effort, and inherent learning curve. If the cloud
and mobile-device solutions and feature enhancements described herein
aren’t compelling enough, then staying put may be a reasonable
strategy for now.

In the final analysis, most CPAs won’t jump to the new technology
right away—and rightfully so. It probably makes the most sense to
upgrade to the latest editions of Windows and Office the next time
your computers need replacing. However, tech-savvy CPAs should find
enough new functionality to warrant transitioning to Office 2013
sooner rather than later.

Office 2013: Rent or Buy?

Microsoft provides three ways to acquire Office 2013.

1. Buy the boxed product, which comes in a cardboard box with a CD;

2. Purchase licenses, which include the product activation key only
(purchasers of Office 2010 licenses with software assurance can
upgrade to any of these three options for free, but they will need to
choose one of the Office 2013 purchase options once their Office 2010
software assurance license expires);

3. Rent the product via an Office 365 monthly subscription plan.

Further complicating the pricing picture, Microsoft offers Standard,
Professional, Professional Plus, Charity, tablet (RT), and multiple
home, student, business, and academic editions of Office 2013,
including editions bundled with added features (such as application
roaming and automatic updates). The results are dozens of potential
price points, but summarized in this
chart are three options for purchasing one of the
professional editions.

In the end, the core decision is whether to buy Office 2013 or rent
it. Microsoft clearly wants users to choose a monthly subscription. In
a significant change to the company’s prior pricing models, the boxed
product and license options allow you to install Office 2013 on only
one computer (or device), down from two or three in the past. In
contrast, the subscription plan option allows you to install the
product on as many as five computers (and/or devices). In addition,
the subscription plan offers a number of additional cloud-based
benefits (centralized email that automatically syncs with all of your
devices, as much as 25 gigabytes of free storage on Microsoft’s
SkyDrive, and web-based hosting).

Why is Microsoft pushing the subscription plans? Software publishers
like rental plans because they produce a steady, ongoing revenue
stream, whereas the sale of product upgrades every few years requires
significant marketing effort and produces a revenue stream that ebbs
and flows.

From the user’s perspective, there are advantages and disadvantages
to the subscription plan, as follows:

Advantages to the Subscription Plan

With a single subscription plan, a user could install Office
2013 on multiple devices—such as his or her office computer, home
computer, traveling laptop, tablet PC, and smartphone—and also
access the web versions of Word, Excel, Publisher, and other Office
applications.

The subscription plan provides a cloud-based email system that
stores email messages, replies, contacts, tasks, and calendars in a
central location so you can access them from any of your computers
or mobile devices or via a web browser.

Data transfers from your computer to Microsoft’s cloud-based
SkyDrive are securely encrypted, and your data remains encrypted in
the cloud, where it is backed up automatically on a continuous basis
and is protected by firewalls, anti-virus software, and intrusion
monitoring solutions. A significant amount of technology, cost, and
effort is needed to duplicate this level of security on a local
computer or file server.

The subscription plan also includes as much as 25 GBs of free,
initial storage space on SkyDrive, and you can also grant permission
to others to access your SkyDrive files or folders, even if they
don’t use Office. This facilitates file sharing and collaboration
between CPA and client or colleague, or both.

In the cloud, email attachments are unnecessary because you can
send file links instead of file attachments so emails travel faster
and deliveries are no longer hung up because of attached file size restrictions.

Important note: While the subscription plan
does provide cloud-based Office applications and data storage in the
cloud, you are not obligated to use these options. The subscription
plan also enables you to install and run your applications locally,
and all of your data files can be saved locally.

Disadvantages of the Subscription Plan

CPAs who choose to skip Office upgrades to save money won’t
have that option under the rental plan.

CPAs who prefer to avoid the cloud will find the subscription
plan’s data cloud-based functionality pointless.

CPAs who embrace the new cloud functionality face new risks. For
example, the cloud adds a new layer of technology in which access to
your applications and files depend upon the reliability of the
internet.

Even though security is high for cloud-based data, careless use of
your login password can easily expose your data.

Storing client data on SkyDrive could lead to compliance issues
outlined in authoritative pronouncements such as the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, and others.

Another significant concern relates to Microsoft’s Code of Conduct
agreement (tinyurl.com/cu8f4l7), which prohibits uploading
files that contain pornography, hate speech, junk mail verbiage, and
numerous other types of content. Microsoft actively monitors the
data files you upload, and in at least one case it suspended a
user’s SkyDrive access after offending files were identified. To
enforce this policy, Microsoft grants outside contractors access
rights to user data that could create regulatory and privacy concerns.

OneNote 2013 enhancements

OneNote features a new splash screen; Note Sync between all of your
devices (including Windows, Android, and Apple phones); drag and drop
whole files; new inking tools for drawing, erasing, editing, and
doodling; improved tables with shading, header rows, and data sorting;
a mobile app for Android and Apple phones; a new radial menu for
easier touch-screen access; touch, pen, or keyboard note-taking; the
ability to send notes to a webpage; embed Excel workbooks or Visio
diagrams; and search by author capability.

In addition, there are new tools for building a browser-based
database app, 2010 web-style database, or traditional desktop
database; a browser-based database app automatically creates views and
switchboards; new table templates; controls dragged and dropped onto
views snap to layout guides automatically; hovering over callouts
displays editable properties; and Access now supports three permission
levels for author, developer, and reader.

Alternatives suites to Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office (priced starting at $119.99 or $15 per month)
commands an estimated 90% to 95% of the U.S. application suite market.
The top five alternatives to Microsoft Office are Corel’s WordPerfect
Office (priced starting at $229); IBM’s Lotus SmartSuite (priced
starting at $19.99); Oracle’s OpenOffice (free); Google Docs (free);
and Google Apps for Business (priced starting at $5 per month).

How much should a new system cost?

Selecting a new computer system is confusing, and no one solution
fits all. However, you may find it useful to consider the desktop
system I use for comparison purposes. In January 2013 I purchased a
new 64-bit, Windows 8 HP Envy computer for $849 (with 12 GB of RAM,
running Intel Core i7-3770 at 3.40 GHz) and installed Office 2013 at a
subscription cost of $20 per month. I kept my two 40-inch monitors
($299 each) and webcam ($50). I added QuickBooks Premier Accounts
Edition ($20 per month), Adobe Acrobat XI ($119), Adobe Photoshop
Elements ($71), Camtasia Studio 8 ($149), and Snagit ($39). The
resulting computer system is fast and reliable, and all of my data and
email messages are accessible from my office computer, home computer,
laptops, tablet, and smartphone.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Office 2013 includes new touch-screen functionality
and cloud-computing and mobile capabilities.

Microsoft has significantly reshaped its Office pricing plans
to steer users to sign up for one of a multitude of subscription
options. Subscription plans cover five PCs for users, while
traditional licenses now cover only one.

Whether you jump from Office 2007/2010 to Office 2013 should
be determined to a large extent by your current technology
situation—which devices you own, which operating systems you use, and
how comfortable you are with cloud-based data storage and file transfer.

Excel benefits from the most impressive set of feature
enhancements in Office 2013. Chief among the new features
are Flash Fill and PowerView.

Word improvements include the ability to edit PDF
documents in Word and publish the changes as a PDF file.

New PowerPoint features include the power to zoom in
on specific areas in slides during presentations.

The new Outlook.com greatly enhances Outlook’s
ability to sync with both multiple devices and with multiple mail services.

When professionals prepare written material for readers inside their organization or outside, they should make sure that no errors distract from the message they need to convey. Take this short quiz for practice in subject-verb agreement.